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Authors: Nicole Blanchard,Skeleton Key

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BOOK: Mechanical Hearts (Skeleton Key)
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“What about you?” he said. “What about your world?”

I shrugged as I bit into a piece of the juicy fruit. “I’m in school to become a doctor—healer. I live with my aunt Millie and Phoebe; she’s five, so about your daughter’s age.”

“Your parents?” he asked.

I just shook my head in response. He didn’t have anything to say after that and we both polished off our pears.

“I was thinking,” I said, once I licked my fingers clean, “that we could use the sextant Fletcher gave you to track the whale again. If those guys who attacked us still have it, then we can find them, overtake them, and still get the whale.”

“We’re lucky I still have it,” he said, pulling it out of his backpack.

I took another pear from the pile next to the fire. “The only thing wrong with that plan is getting to them. Even if we figure out where they took the whale, we have no way to get there.”

“That’s not the only thing wrong with it,” Ezra said.

Ambrosia

E
zra held
the sextant up and peered through the eye sight. He squinted, cursed, and tried it all over again. Whatever he saw inside did not make him happy.

The fierce scowl on his face made him look all the more like the pirate he claimed not to be. “Is it broken?” I asked hesitantly.

“It sure as hell isn’t working,” he said, then threw it into the dirt beside his feet. “I can’t get a decent read off of it. Before the attack, we were obviously headed in the right direction, but now, it just reads like we’ve already reached our destination.”

“We’ll figure it out,” I said. “If we can survive a sinking ship, we can survive this.”

He didn’t say anything and I didn’t want to agitate him any more than he already was, so I retrieved a bit of plastic they used for diverting water and laid down on the ground next to the fire. I made a bed of my clothes so I didn’t have to sleep in the dirt and used the plastic to conserve what little body heat I had.

“The best thing we can do is get some rest and reevaluate in the morning. There’s nothing we can do right now. You should be able to sleep now, and I’ll make sure to wake you up every couple hours.”

He shook his head. “I’ll stay up and keep watch.”

“Are you sure that’s necessary?”

“I don’t want to take any chances.”

By then, my eyelids were drooping, and I could barely speak for all the yawning. “Fine,” I said. “Just wake me in a couple of hours and we’ll trade off. If your head starts hurting, don’t try to be a hero.”

“Trust me,” he said as I drifted into sleep, “I’m not the hero in this scenario.”

The next morning it was the cold that woke me. I was shivering so much my teeth clattered together with an audible racket. A chill clung to the morning air and the fire had long since burned itself out.

I pawed at my eyes and sat up. Ezra was leaning against the pear tree. “Why didn’t you wake me for my watch?”

He shrugged. “I had a bit of a nap yesterday and you needed to sleep.”

My joints ached from sleeping on the rough floor and I rubbed my hands over my arms after a good stretch. Neither did much to wash away the chill, so I put on my still-damp clothes, reasoning that they would dry throughout the day.

“So you watched me sleep?” I said. “That’s not creepy at all.”

His lips twisted into a half-smile. “Considering that you think of me as a pirate, you’re lucky I didn’t do more than just watch you sleep.”

Heat washed away any lingering sleepiness like one warm wave on a hot summer day, leaving a coat awareness draped over me in its wake. I didn’t say anything back, but I felt his eyes on me as I gathered a couple apple and pears for breakfast.

Something changed throughout the night. Something I didn’t quite understand. I resolved to ignore it. Complications—and anything other than a platonic understanding between Ezra and myself would have been a complication—weren’t on my agenda. Even if there was a tender feeling writhing in my stomach when I looked at him. Instead of seeing him as a means to an end, now when I caught his gaze, I remembered his head on my lap and his smooth voice telling me stories of his past.

I took my time cutting up the apples and pears and mixing them together in the cleaned tin pot. It wasn’t much, but we needed fuel for the day ahead.

I was halving a pear when I felt Ezra’s presence behind me. Unlike before, my body stilled, but not with the tinge of fear it had before, but with complete feminine awareness.

It made me scowl at the pear in my hands. “Did you need something?” I asked.

Instead of answering, he took the hand with the pear and brought it to his lips. I twisted around so he could see the downward turn of my lips.

“You could have waited. I was almost done.”

I was so displeased by the turn of events, I didn’t realize the fruit was still in my hands as he nibbled. The knife clattered into the tin bowl as my hand went limp. He bit into the pear and his full lips wrapped around its flesh. I had a sudden, startling urge to taste the pear from his lips.

“You can let go of my hand now.” I was pleased to find my voice was steady—certainly steadier than my thundering heartbeat. I only hoped he couldn’t feel it racing underneath his palm.

He didn’t. Instead, he took another bite, that time his lips grazed my fingers. I wrenched my hand from his and went back to peeling the fruit.

When I was finished, I filled a bowl and shoved it in his direction. “Here, if you’re so hungry.”

He took the bowl and sat next to me. He didn’t mention the deal with the pears, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to bring it up.

“I think our best chance at getting out of here is to see if anything was left behind before they abandoned this place. Maybe they have some sort of communication or boat they left behind that we can use.”

I barely heard what he was saying because I was so fascinated by his glistening fingers bringing bits of apple and pears to his lips.

When I noticed he was looking at me expectantly, I frowned. “What?”

“Do you want some of mine?” he asked. “You’re staring at it like you’re going to take a bite. Did you not get enough?”

I glanced back up at his face and noticed his self-satisfied smirk so I scowled in return as I finished my own food. Then, I wiped my hands on my still-damp pants and got to my feet.

“We better get started, then,” I said.

I left the cups and tin pot in the farmhouse and we gathered anything of use from the pod. There was a medical kit I wished I’d seen the night before when I was cleaning Ezra’s head wound, an automata that told the time—not that we would have much use for it—and a brass card with a picture of Ezra’s family printed on it.

His eyes softened at the image, and he pocketed it with a gruff, “Best be going,” before he dove back in the jungle of orchard trees.

I followed after him with a frown that was quickly becoming an automatic response to being in his presence.

The lamps that heated the capsule were turned up to full blast, no doubt to stimulate the growth of the various plants, but it was a heck of a thing to tromp through since the chill had burned off.

Ezra cut a powerful figure though the reaching arms of the trees and brush. Fingers of it clutched at my clothes as I fought my way through. We picked our way through the fields, taking handfuls of sugar snap peas and green beans to feast on when we hadn’t made our way across to the other side by lunch time.

“How much farther?” I asked when we stopped to take a bit of water from the pack he carried on his back.

Sweat beaded on his forehead and he’d shed the thick black overcoat he wore like a second skin. “Not too much farther, I hope. These ag-farms were small when they built them at first. Now that we have so many people, they had to build larger ones to support the population.”

“How many people survived here after the war?” I asked. “How many ports are there like Arliss?”

Ezra wiped a hand over his brow and took the canteen from me to chug. His throat bobbed as he swallowed and a bead of sweat slid down into the dark tangle of hair at the hollow of his neck.

“There were tens of thousands that survived the war, but I doubt half that made it down to the capsules. Many died from exposure to the toxins, as did many of their children. It’s only now that our people have finally begun to thrive. It’s the water, you see. It’s poisoned. Anyone who’s not been exposed with it either die or be changed.”

“Changed?”

He flexed his arm between us.

“Tink mentioned that. So, if you go into the water?”

“I’d be right as rain.”

There were so many questions I wanted to ask, but as I opened my mouth, we broke through the edge of the trees and came to the other side. It never ceased to amaze me how beautiful their world was.

Living on the coast of Florida had always taught me an appreciation for the sea, but being there, surrounded by it, was another thing all together.

“You coming?” he asked as he held out a hand.

Without a thought, I put my hand in his and stepped out of the trees.

Grime still coated the glass walls, but I could see shelves of reef surrounding the side of the capsule.

But there was no pod the farmers had left behind.

“I suppose it was too much to hope they would have forgotten one behind, then,” I said, disappointment coating my voice.

“Don’t give up yet, princess,” Ezra said as he strode forward. “The comms panel looks intact. We might be able to signal a passing ship.”

“Here’s hoping,” I said. I came to a stop beside him as he opened the panel and peered inside.

“You sound enthusiastic about the prospect of leaving the pleasure of my company.” He grinned up at me. I took a sip from the canteen while I thought of a response. I hoped the water would undo the knot in my throat.

“I just want to go home,” I said. Apparently, the water didn’t help, because I stumbled over the words.

Ezra’s expression softened. He abandoned the work with the comms panel and cupped my cheek. His eyes warmed and his fingers traced the shell of my ear. “I know you do, Caroline,” he said. “I promise I’ll get you home.”

The tension between us thickened, and I swallowed back the sudden urge to have him come closer.

“Don’t you dare think about kissing me,” I warned.

“I’m not thinking about it. I fully intend to. The only problem with kissing you—” he leaned in so the words were a whisper in my ear “—is that I may not be able to stop.”

He nuzzled along the line of my ear, replacing his fingers with his lips, and I couldn’t stop the shiver that coursed through me.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “What do you want from me?”

Ezra pulled back to look at me, and I had to tear my eyes away from his lips. They were no longer bleached of color; instead, they were tinted red and probably still tasted like pears. If my fists weren’t knotted at my side, I was afraid they’d be tangled in his hair or tugging up his shirt to feel his chest paved with smooth muscle.

“Why do I have to want something from you in return for a kiss?” His hands were moving along my body, but that time he definitely wasn’t checking for injuries.

“You were the one who wouldn’t help me find a way home without getting something in return,” I said matter-of-factly. “I’m just wondering what this is going to cost me.”

“I don’t pay for women,” he returned. “I don’t think it speaks well of either of us that you’re implying it.”

Blood rushed to my cheeks and I moved back a half-step. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

But he silenced me with a move so smooth I couldn’t help but melt into his arms.

I knew without another thought that I’d forever associate the scent of sweet fruit and the taste of pears with the kiss like an ambrosia. If I were the superstitious type, I’d believe the thought that fluttered through my brain as his lips caressed mine—that the key had brought me there for that moment alone.

He murmured my name against my lips, and his mechanical arm twined around my waist.

As he pulled me closer, a voice rang out beside us. “You there! What are you doing?”

BOOK: Mechanical Hearts (Skeleton Key)
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